Small Business SEO

What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the name for the process of tweaking or optimizing your website and its content in an effort to positively affect the visibility of your site in the organic (non-paid) search listings and improve your ranking for searches.
Why does SEO matter for small business?
Done well, it can represent an ongoing and at-times abundant source of free traffic to your website. Unlike Paid Search (otherwise known as PPC), clicks to your site from the organic or natural listings incur no cost per click.
What are some of the key factors that impact a business’s SEO?
The need to produce fresh, relevant content that aligns with what your audience is searching for.
Consider a blog as being a principal source of delivering fresh content to answer the questions that your customers are asking. Don’t get hung up on the specific keywords – write naturally, even conversationally. Search engines have moved beyond just matching a keyword from the search.
Of course, if you know that customers routinely ask a specific question, don’t be afraid to use those keywords, but don’t write the content around the keyword.
Are there any misconceptions about SEO?
Yes, that it’s simply too complicated. It doesn’t have to be and shouldn’t be. Too often, business owners fear it, deeming that the “science of SEO” is too much of a full-time job in and of itself. Sure, a part of ongoing SEO is about the code of your website to ensure that it’s easily indexed by search engines, and therefore either requires knowledge of code, which is less likely, or requires some assistance. But at its core, good SEO consists more functionally of delivering relevant and meaningful content to an audience that is searching for a product or a service that you deliver.
Are there any common SEO mistakes businesses should be aware of?
Yes. Getting hung up on writing content that includes specific keywords with the express purpose of “ranking for that keyword”. It’s not a system that you can game as easily as just stuffing your website or blog post full of your target keywords.
Also, another mistake or perhaps missed opportunity is not sticking to a calendar of content; ranking for search terms can only happen with a consistent effort to update your blog with continued meaningful content. Don’t write a post and then go back a year later to write another one. Develop a content calendar and stick to it as much as possible.